A January Walk

01 Friday Feb 2019

Posted by Clare Pooley in Rural Diary, walking

Tags

All Saints church, Ash, beech, bramble, common reeds, cow parsley, Down the Garden Path by Beverley Nichols, Holly, ivy, January, muddy lanes, primrose, St Margaret South Elmham church, Suffolk, walking, white bryony, white deadnettle, Winter Heliotrope

Let me take you back to the 1st of January…….

We don’t celebrate New Year in this house; we usually (but not always) stay up till midnight on New Year’s Eve, listen to fireworks being let off in the surrounding farms and villages and then make our way to bed. We have a relaxed New Year’s Day with a late breakfast and then watch/listen to the New Year’s Day Concert from Vienna on the kitchen TV while we read, drink coffee, do the ironing, chat, think about lunch etc. Often, we go for a walk and this year yes, we went for a walk.

We left it too late to travel to a place to walk so we set off from the front door and did our usual circuit of the lanes round St. Margaret village.

After just a few yards I turned around and looked back the way we’d come. We have such long shadows in January!

Richard and I enjoy this walk as it is familiar, is only a couple of miles and gives us plenty to look at.

Looking across the fields to our left as we walked along we saw All Saint’s church.

There were still plenty of leaves on the brambles (Rubus fruticosus agg.).

I enjoyed seeing the bright pink and apricot colours on this leaf while many of the other leaves were still green. The stems of bramble are grey and lavender and very prickly.

White Deadnettle (Lamium album) in flower.

Our post box. It is growing quite a good crop of lichen on it.

Cattle shed

Our very muddy lane.

A dead tree fell during one of the recent storms and has crushed part of the hedge.

A glowing rose leaf (Rosa canina).

Holly (Ilex aquifolium) growing in the hedge.

Ash saplings (Fraxinus excelsior) with their black buds.

White Bryony berries (Bryonia dioica) decorate the trees.

A close-up of the bryony berries; a little shrivelled and past their best.

Cottages on the lane from Bateman’s Barn to St Margaret, looking back towards Bateman’s Barn.

The reeds (Phragmites australis) at the side of the lane have been cut recently leaving just these few at the base of a telegraph pole.

Ivy (Hedera helix) climbing up tree trunks in the hedgerow.

A view across the fields to distant woods on a slight knoll.

I love the muted shades of the countryside in winter.

Winter Heliotrope (Petasites fragrans) in flower with myriad Goosegrass or Cleavers (Galium aparine) seedlings.

Winter Heliotrope has the most delicious scent! On a mild winter’s day the air is filled with its sweet perfume. It is an invasive alien and takes over large areas of hedgerow to the detriment of all the native plants but…. nothing else has such bright green leaves and such flowers at this time of year. One of the books I am reading currently is ‘Down the Garden Path’ by Beverley Nichols written in 1932. He enthuses about Winter Heliotrope!

‘If you want to begin with something that is quite foolproof, you cannot do better than invest in a few roots of Petasites fragrans which has the pretty English name of winter heliotrope. Some people sneer at the winter heliotrope. They say the flower is dingy, and that the roots have abominable habits, being inclined to spread indiscriminately into the garden next door. The people next door should be grateful if the roots do spread into their garden. For the flower is not dingy at all … it is a little pale and humble … that is all. Besides, one does not grow the winter heliotrope for its beauty of form. One grows it for its beauty of scent. It has a most exquisite fragrance. If you cut it and carry it indoors it will scent a whole room.’

Quantities of Beech mast (Fagus sylvatica) covered the path to the church.

Young primrose leaf-whorls (Primula vulgaris) with a few Cow Parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) seedlings in the churchyard.

St Margaret South Elmham church. I have been cleaning this church regularly since last February.

A large beech tree in the churchyard.

A very twisted Ash tree in the churchyard.

Richard waiting for me at the church gate.

Richard.

Some small mushrooms discovered on the grass verge.

The fern-like leaves of Cow Parsley waiting for spring.

Our house seen across the field.

Home for a cup of tea!

As many of you will have realised, I have been trying to catch-up with all of your posts. I considered missing all the posts out and just starting afresh but then I found I needed to know what you have been up to for the past few weeks. I wanted to admire all your photos and read your poems and stories. I haven’t commented very often for which I apologise, but I have definitely read all you have written and I have enjoyed it all! I am nearly caught up and I will be back to commenting regularly again.

January Walks

12 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by Clare Pooley in Rural Diary, walking

≈ 64 Comments

Tags

birds, cattle, clouds, fallen trees, landscapes, lapwing, Minsmere Nature Reserve, primrose, seascape, shoveler, storm damage, Suffolk, super blue moon, tank traps, walking, weather

The day after the storm that cut off our electricity, Richard and I decided to take a short walk to see what damage the wind had caused.

We liked the colours in the sky and the faded earth.

I looked closer at the trees on the horizon.

The wind was still blowing quite strongly and it was cold but we enjoyed being out in the fresh air.

Our first fallen tree

This tree had been part of a hedge round a field. It looks as though it had been dead for a while before it was felled by the storm. The tree had snapped at ground level. Dead trees can be very useful as host to so many other organisms; providing food and shelter for many creatures. They are left in hedges until either the wind knocks them over or until the landowner thinks they are becoming a danger to people passing by on roads or paths.

A view across the fields

A field full of pregnant cows….

and new-born calves. These look like Aberdeen Angus to me.

Another fallen tree

This one could have been dead already, as well. The trunk had snapped three feet up from the ground and the tree was covered in ivy. Ivy (Hedera helix) is usually no problem on a healthy tree but it can smother weak trees and the ivy here would have caused a lot of resistance to the gale-force winds.

This fallen tree had already had someone working on it.

We found some primroses (Primula vulgaris) flowering in the verge on the other side of our front hedge as we got back home.

A week later we drove to Minsmere Nature Reserve owned by the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds). We decided to walk out towards the sea.

Large expanse of marshland covered in reeds

Looking north from the end of the path as it reaches the beach. The little white buildings on the horizon on the right of the photo are the old coastguards’ cottages at Dunwich.

Richard and Elinor sitting in the sun

A closer look at the coastguards’ cottages and a glimpse of the sea.

Looking out to sea

Richard ‘shifting’ one of the WW2 tank traps that have been left in a line along the coast.

Tank traps

Here is a link which describes the anti-tank cubes at Walberswick – a village a few miles to the north of Minsmere.

If you look carefully you might be able to see the large flock of Lapwings we saw flying over the marsh

An unsuccessful close-up of the Lapwings (Vanellus vanellus)

Sunset over the Scrape

We liked the cloud formation here. Stratocumulus undulatus, we have been told.

Sunset

A slideshow showing some of the birds we saw on the Scrape

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A Shoveler (Anas clypeata)

Here are some photos I took of the super, blue moon at the end of January

They are not as clear as I would have liked as I wasn’t using a tripod or our better camera. I include the blurred first one mainly for the beautiful colour of the moon as it rose.

Thanks for visiting!

Reydon Wood

25 Tuesday Apr 2017

Posted by Clare Pooley in Insects, plants, Rural Diary, walking, wild flowers

≈ 63 Comments

Tags

Alexanders, Barren Strawberry, Bugle, Common Dog Violet, coppice wood, cow parsley, Dryad's Saddle, early dog-violet, Early Purple Orchid, ferns, Goldilocks Buttercup, Great Diving Beetle, Greater Stitchwort, ground-ivy, Herb-Robert, Hornbeam, lesser celandine, primrose, Reydon Wood, Suffolk, Suffolk Wildlife Trust, Three-nerved Sandwort, water-violet, wild flowers, wild strawberry, Wood Anemone, Yellow Archangel, Yellow Pimpernel

We drove to Reydon Wood on Friday, in search of bluebells.

Wood Lane

We parked at the end of Wood Lane. The walk down the lane is pleasant and we get glimpses of the wood on the other side of the deep ditch on our right.

Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) is in flower everywhere.

The Romans introduced Alexanders into Britain and it is mainly found near the coast especially in the east of the country. It was used as a medicinal herb and also as a pot herb. The flowerheads can be steamed like broccoli.

Greater Stitchwort (Stellaria holostea) is another flower that is blooming wherever I go at present.

The Anglo Saxons and Celts believed that a stitch in the side was probably caused by elf-shot and this plant cured it!

Greater Stitchwort

Our first sighting of Bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta)

Cow-parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) is coming into flower very early this year

There they are, on the far side of the ditch!

A beautiful Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna )

Bluebells and Greater Stitchwort

To the left of us as we walked up Wood Lane we could see a field full of bright yellow Oil-seed Rape (Brassica napus) through the hedge.

I believe this is Goldilocks Buttercup ( Ranunculus auricomus)

This is the first time I have taken notice of this buttercup. I have probably seen it before because I find they are fairly common in woodland, but I’ve never looked at one properly, just assuming it was a Meadow or Creeping Buttercup. The stem leaves are quite different from the other buttercups I know and I read that the flowers are usually deformed or have some or all of their petals missing.

We arrived at the entrance to the wood

This is the first time I have seen Wood Anemones ( Anemone nemorosa) here.

There were a few primroses (Primula vulgaris ) still flowering.

Common Dog Violet (Viola riviniana )

This is the most common violet we have in this country and it can be found anywhere except on very acidic soils. The leaves are heart-shaped and the spur (at the back of the flower) is much paler than the petals. This violet is unscented.

Early Dog Violet (Viola reichenbachiana )

Another unscented violet; the flowers of this plant are paler and smaller than the Common Dog Violet and the spur is usually as dark or even darker than the petals. The leaves are narrower than those of the Common Dog Violet. This isn’t a good photo but it is the best out of the three I took!

Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum)

This plant could be named after St Robert of Molesme who founded Citeaux Abbey in France and who is said to have staunched wounds and healed ulcers with Herb Robert. It could also be named after Robert, Duke of Normandy, the son of William the Conqueror and a patron of medical botany. He used Herb Robert to cure the plague.

The path through the wood.

Barren Strawberry (Potentilla sterilis )

The flower here is past its best so it is not easy to see that the petals have a gap between them and that the sepals are clearly seen. The leaves (on the right of the photo) are a dull, matt green and divided into three toothed leaflets with the terminal tooth on each leaflet being smaller and shorter than the adjacent teeth.

Wild Strawberry (Fragaria vesca )

Here is a Wild Strawberry, which I found just a few feet away from the Barren Strawberry and you can see the difference between them. The petals are close together and mainly hide the sepals. The leaves are a bright, shiny yellow-green and the terminal tooth is as long as (sometimes longer than) the adjacent teeth.

Here is the pond in the middle of the wood. On the far side are Water Violets (Hottonia palustris )

More Water Violets – I couldn’t get a better photo of them.

Great Diving Beetle (Dytiscus marginalis )

We watched this beetle for a while as it came to the surface to gather air which it stores under its elytra or wing cases. The beetle’s spiracles (breathing pores) are under the wing cases and allow the air stored there to enter the body. When the air is used up the beetle returns to the surface for more. There were many newts in the pond too.

Yellow Pimpernel (Lysimachia nemorum )

A large patch of Bugle (Ajuga reptans )

Beautiful new green leaves of Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus )

Hornbeams look a little like Beech trees but the trunks have fluted bark and the leaves are toothed. Hornbeams are regularly coppiced and Reydon Wood is a coppice wood.

A coppice tree which will probably be harvested in the next few years. The tree is probably many hundred years old.

The area just beyond this barrier has recently been coppiced and the stools (tree stumps) will be sprouting soon. The barrier has been built up using twigs and branches to stop deer from eating the new growth on the coppice stools.

Coppice stools surrounded by Bluebells and with the deer barrier in the background

A strange-looking stool which looks as though it might run off as soon as our backs are turned!

Harvested coppice logs

I believe this fungus is Dryad’s Saddle (Polyporus squamosus )

Early Purple Orchid ( Orchis mascula)

Early Purple Orchid showing its spotted leaves

Three-nerved Sandwort (Moehringia trinervia )

At first I thought this was Common Chickweed but then I noticed the petals are not split and that the sepals are longer than the petals. The leaves have three to five parallel veins on them. I didn’t manage to get a close-up shot of the plant.

Herb Robert (pink flowers) and Ground Ivy (Glechoma hederacea ) (Blue flowers)

Lesser Celandine, Herb Robert, Ground Ivy and Early Purple Orchid

Yellow Archangel ( Lamiastrum galeobdolon)

There is a cultivated form of this plant (subspecies ‘argentatum’) with silvery patches on the leaves which has escaped into the wild and is quite invasive.

Lesser Celandines and Bluebells

Early Purple Orchid and Bluebells

Fern and Bluebells

Bluebells and ferns

Here is a slideshow of the Bluebells we saw.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The Bluebells were not quite at their peak and as the day was overcast and chilly we didn’t smell their wonderful scent. We decided it would be a good idea for us to return in a week’s time to see how they had developed. Unfortunately, we have had very cold weather this week with frosts and wintery showers of hail and sleet. I hope the Bluebells are not too damaged. I apologise for the length of this post.

Thanks for visiting!

Old News

03 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by Clare Pooley in art, churches, Days out, Norwich, plants, Rural Diary

≈ 69 Comments

Tags

Black Spleenwort, family, hazel catkins, primrose, Rumburgh Church, Sainsbury Centre, snowdrops, spring, St Michael and St Felix Church Rumburgh, Suffolk, University of East Anglia, witch-hazel

It is over a month since I last wrote a diary post. We haven’t done very much in that time but the days are getting longer and there are signs of spring in the garden and hedgerows.

Witch hazel

ooOOoo

The central elements on our old toaster had stopped working so we have bought ourselves a new toaster and this new one manages to toast both sides of a slice of bread at the same time! It has a ‘bagel button’ (though as I have never eaten a bagel I think I would prefer to call it a ‘teacake button’) which toasts one side and warms the other. We can now re-live the old toaster experience, except in reverse.

Snowdrops in bud

ooOOoo

Another excitement has been the emptying and repair of the septic tank. Only those of you who do not have mains sewage can truly relate to this. The tank was well overdue for emptying and we knew it needed repairing a year ago but we have been let down by our usual contractor and have had to find someone new. The new contractor arrived and did what he had to do and was efficient and professional. An added bonus, as far as we were concerned, was the wind direction on the day.

Hazel catkins in the hedge

ooOOoo

We have decided to have all our internal doors replaced and a carpenter has visited and priced up the job for us. He will be doing the work over three days next week. Richard will then have to spend quite a lot of time painting the doors, as well as all the skirting boards and the banisters. We hope to redecorate the hall, stairs and landing and get a new carpet some time in the next few months.

I’m not sure how many hazel nuts we will have on this tree this year. The female flowers have appeared before the male catkins have matured.

ooOOoo

At the very end of January we had a morning prayer service at our church of St Michael and St Felix at Rumburgh. The day before the service Richard and I called in at the church to make sure everything was tidy and to set the heating to come on well before the service. It was a cold day but inside the church was even colder than out in the open!

I found the first rather bedraggled primroses of the year in a sheltered spot in the churchyard.

I also found my first snowdrops of the year

Rumburgh gravestone

This gravestone has a skull engraved on it. Richard was asked to see if it was still in the graveyard recently as there had been a report that it might have gone missing.

The west door, which isn’t used anymore.

The west window

Work will start on March the 20th on the new tower screen in the church. We have been saving for years and years to get the work done and at last it is about to happen. Once the screen is in place the tower will be shut off from the body of the church and we hope it might be less draughty and warmer.

Black Spleenwort (Asplenium adiantum-nigrum) growing in the mortar on the wall of the church

ooOOoo

Elinor has now left the City College but we hope this is only a temporary thing. As I mentioned in my last diary post she wants to enrol on a one year Art and Design course for older students and has therefore filled out the application form. We have been notified that the college has received the form and I hope we will hear that Elinor has an interview soon. At the interview she will be expected to hand in a review of an exhibition she has been to see recently and with that in mind, we went to the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich and viewed an exhibition of 20th century Japanese photography. Photography was not allowed in the exhibition hall but there is a large collection of world art on display in the main gallery, most of the exhibits donated by Lord and Lady Sainsbury.

Below are my favourites from the main gallery.

Edgar Degas – Little Dancer Aged Fourteen

A beautiful Benin bronze – the Head of an Oba; early 16th century

Henry Moore – Mother and Child

Whistling bottles from Equador – one in the shape of an owl and the other is a bird sitting on eggs or pods. Both 1000 – 100 BC

Another couple of exhibits from Equador

Sketch for a Portrait of Lisa by Francis Bacon

Standing Jizo Bosatsu – Japan (1185-1333)

The top exhibit with the ram’s head is a backstrap from a sword or dagger hilt – India late 17th century The lower exhibit is an archer’s thumb-ring in the form of a bird – India 17th – 18th century

Left rear – Image of the Goddess Kaumari, India 17th century. Right rear – Shiva as Chandrashekharamurti, South India c. AD 1100. Front centre – Figure of Chamunda Devi, Nepal/Tibet 17th/18th century

Walking Hippopotamus – Egypt c. 1880 BC

The Sainsbury Centre. One of the first major buildings designed by Sir Norman Foster, it was completed in 1978.

It is a steel clad building with one face almost entirely glazed.

By the late 80’s the collection had grown so much that Foster was asked to design an extension. He decided to build underground and this is one of the entrances to it.

The new basement has a curved glass frontage that emerges from the slope underneath the original building overlooking the man-made lake. This new wing can only be seen from the lake but as it was very muddy there and beginning to go dark on a very gloomy day, I was unable to photograph it.

The University of East Anglia’s grounds looking towards the lake

Part of the university. There are many items of sculpture to be seen here.

Another Henry Moore sculpture

The University has an excellent creative writing department and many well known writers have studied here. Tracy Chevalier; Kazuo Ishiguro; Ian McEwan; Rose Tremain – to name but a few.

My music choice today is a song from Katie Melua.

Thanks for visiting!

A Walk

28 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by Clare Pooley in plants, Rural Diary, trees, walking, weather, wild birds

≈ 47 Comments

Tags

blackbird, dandelion, English Oak, hedging and ditching, Italian Alder, Lesser Celandines, ponds, primrose, Roe deer, rookery, Springtime, Suffolk folk dance music, walking, windy weather

On Sunday 13th March Richard and I were able to go for a walk along the lanes together for the first time in months. The fields were still much too wet for us to walk across them easily so we stuck to the roads and got along very well. The weather was bright and sunny but the wind was strong and from the north-east so we didn’t linger.

Primroses (Primula vulgaris) had begun to adorn the edges of the roadside.

We surprised a Roe Deer (Capreolus capreolus) who didn’t stay around for a photograph.

This pond was dug a few weeks ago and it is now full of water. It is about five or six feet deep. There is a cottage on the opposite side of the lane which is being renovated and we think this pond was dug to improve the drainage round the building.

Italian Alder catkins

Halfway down our lane a row of Italian Alders (Alnus cordata) grow between the lane and a wide arable field. The trees are large and I assume were planted as a windbreak.

The Beck wasn’t as deep as it had been a couple of weeks earlier but was still flowing quite quickly.

Looking back the way we had come you can see the ditch at the side of the road is still very full. This ditch, along with most of the others near our house, has been cleared and dug out this winter.

The sides of the ditches are scraped to clear away the thick vegetation which if left, can stop the water from flowing away and will cause the roads and fields to flood. The mud is then heaped up on the top of the bank and tamped down. This is necessary work but means that we won’t see many wild flowers here for a while.

DSCN0283Recent hedging and ditching work

This photo shows more of the hedging and ditching work going on.

The ditch in the middle distance has been dug out and the hedge on the far side of it which had been left for too long without maintenance and had grown into a row of spindly trees, was being cut right back.

A view across the field looking in the direction of our house.

A grand Pedunculate or English Oak (Quercus robur) at the side of the lane. It has lost a large branch recently in a storm. You can just see the orange scar where the branch was ripped away.

Another view from the lane.

Another of the muddy lanes we walked along. The sunshine and the strong wind were doing a good job of drying the road.

The Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale agg.) are beginning to flower…..

…and so are the Lesser Celandines (Ranunculus ficaria).

The Primroses are doing well this year.

The Rookery at St Margaret’s village was busy.

More primroses under the hedge.

A male Blackbird (Turdus merula) sitting in a tree above my head was being blown about in the breeze.

These ponds appear on St Margaret’s common when we have had a lot of rain

This is our house as seen from the field at the back. We turned off the lane and walked back home down the edge of the field which had dried out quite nicely.

Our big pond as seen from the field. The white cord is all the boundary marker we have at present.

A view of the rest of the pond showing where the new summerhouse is.

My choice of music today is a video of a folk music session at a Suffolk pub.

Thanks for visiting!

Spring Days

20 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by Clare Pooley in Gardening, Insects, plants, Rural Diary, weather, wild birds

≈ 53 Comments

Tags

cherry-plum, daffodil, Emmaus, garden improvements, greylag, heron, ladybird, Mallard, new furniture, primrose, rook, rook's nest, spring flowers, sweet violet, wild birds

There isn’t much of interest to report – we have been busy and we are all very tired but there isn’t much to show for it all.

We have had a new suite of furniture delivered for our living room and the old sofas and reclining chair have been donated to Emmaus a charity that helps and supports the homeless. They have a second-hand retail shop at Ditchingham, a village a few miles to the north of us which is where our furniture was taken. The new furniture is very different but extremely comfortable. It is also less bulky than our old furniture so our living room seems a little bigger.

Our old shed has been demolished and we have had a concrete pad laid next to the tool shed where we will put a new potting shed. Getting rid of the old shed, which really was an eyesore, has opened up the garden at the north side of the house. Richard has dug over the soil which was underneath the shed and will add organic matter to it to help rejuvenate it. Eventually, he would like to plant flowering shrubs there. He has also added compost to and dug over the soil in the vegetable beds. The potatoes are ready for planting and Richard will begin sowing pea and bean seeds in pots soon. The weather has been much too cold recently for anything to be planted outside and as we have an unheated greenhouse we daren’t sow seeds there just yet either.

Last week we saw quite a lot of sunshine and even though the wind was from the north-east and very cold everything seemed very spring-like. This week there has been increasing amounts of cloud and a lot of drizzly rain so with the cold wind it feels like a return of winter. The daytime temperature has stayed between 5 and 6 degrees C all the week.

I walked round the garden last week and took a few photographs in the sunshine.

A Mallard swimming on the big pond

Mallard drake

Primroses in one of the ditches round the garden

Daffodils flowering on the bank of the big pond

A Rook’s nest being built in the Ash tree.

Greylag pair on the pond

Greylags on the pond

I have seen the heron in the garden a few times.

I tried to sneak up on the heron as it stood at the side of the pond but it saw me and flew into the field behind our house. This is a poor photo that has been severely cropped.

I found a half-eaten fish on the path round the pond which could have been left there by the heron or by the otter which is causing owners of ponds in our area to wish the otter was living many miles away!

Ladybird

Mallards in the front ditch

Sweet violet

Cherry-plum

My choice of music for this post is Emmanuel Chabrier’s ‘Suite Pastorale’. As soon as I hear it I think of spring days in the countryside – cool breezes, sparkling streams, flowers and singing birds. I hope you like the music as much as I do.

Thanks for visiting!

A Few Things I’ve Seen in my Garden.

21 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by Clare Pooley in amphibians, fish, Gardening, plants, Rural Diary, trees, Uncategorized, wild birds

≈ 38 Comments

Tags

bird's nest, birds, Common Frog, cowslip, daffodils, ducks, fish, flowers, frogspawn, garden, Great Tit, ground-ivy, hazel, Hazel bud-gall, horse chestnut, lichen, Mallard, marsh marigold, moss, pond, primrose, primula, spring, Suffolk, sweet violet, tadpoles, trees, Water Mint

Two very handsome Mallard drakes (Anas platyrhynchos).

Ground-ivy (Glechoma hederacea). Many of the newer leaves are purple and the plant has a slightly unpleasant minty scent.

As I have mentioned before, when we moved to this house there were no Primroses (Primula vulgaris) in the garden at all. We now have a few plants here and there on the banks of our ditches.

The Cowslips (Primula veris) are beginning to bloom. We have always had plenty of these!

A primula hybrid that arrived unbidden about three years ago. I rather like it.

The house next door to us is the former village school. I am not sure when it closed but a friend of ours from church used to attend it during the 1940’s. Where our house and garden is now, there was a meadow full of wild flowers and our friend walked across it every day to collect the milk for the school from the farm next door. These wild flowers we have in our garden are all that’s left of the hundreds that used to be here up to about 50 or 60 years ago. I hope that we can hang on to these few and perhaps, by not using chemicals, encourage them to spread.

Sweet Violet (Viola odorata)

This is our parcels and newspaper box at the end of our drive. We noticed during the winter that it was starting to rot and needed replacing. It appears that we weren’t the only ones to notice the state the box was in. I opened it the other day to find something had made a hole in the back of it ( you can see where the light is shining through just below my thumb as I lift the lid). The next day I found this straw and moss had been put in there. Richard saw a Great Tit (Parus major) flying away from the box so I suspect this is a Great Tit’s nest. I carefully peeped into it a day or so later and found the whole box stuffed full of moss and we can also see lots of straw sticking out from where the box sides are coming away from the base. We have tied up the box and put a ‘not in use’ sign on it and we now await the happy arrival of baby Great Tits.

I knew that Tits nested in holes and I also was aware that Willow Tits excavated their own holes but I hadn’t realised that Great Tits also excavated holes to nest in.

The top of the brick gate-post at the end of our drive is covered in moss and lichen but because we haven’t had much rain recently, it isn’t looking as good as usual. Birds have been collecting the moss for their nests too.

This is a close-up of one of the lichens.

The Marsh-marigold or King Cup (Caltha palustris) is flowering in the pond.

I love its shiny yellow petals.

I took this photo of the daffodils round the pond over a week ago and I am glad I did. On Tuesday and Wednesday of last week we had very warm weather (24 degrees C on Wednesday!) and the daffodils that had come out earliest began to wilt.

Earlier this year I posted pictures of these Hazel (Corylus avellana) bud galls. I went to look at them again last week and noticed tiny flies sitting on all of the galls. I wonder if these flies had hatched out of the galls.

New Hazel leaves

Water Mint (Mentha aquatica). The new shoots are growing round and in the big pond.

Horse-chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum). This photo was taken about a week ago.

This photo of our Horse-chestnut tree was taken on the same day. These leaves are higher and get more sunlight. I was pleased to see that the flower panicles (candles) were growing nicely.

I saw the frogs spawning but unfortunately didn’t have my camera with me. I took this photo of the spawn later in the day. This is the first time I have found frogspawn in our pond and was surprised at how late in the year it was. We have a windswept, exposed garden which may account for it.

There were lots of eggs and I was glad that the fish that live in the pond hadn’t come out of hibernation yet.

I took this picture a week later as the tadpoles were hatching out. The fish still hadn’t woken up!

Two days after this the tadpoles had dispersed but I had also seen the fish swimming in the pond and leaping to catch flies. They were probably feasting on tadpoles too.

I found a dead fish on the path round the pond again – I found one last year that had been caught by the Heron who had been disturbed by one of us. I don’t know what had caught this year’s fish as there was no stab mark on it. It is interesting to see the workings of the food-chain. We are part of it as we get bitten by the flies that the fish eat!

Thank-you for visiting!

Meanderings and More March Flowers

11 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in amphibians, fish, Gardening, plants, Rural Diary, Uncategorized, wild birds

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

blackthorn, daffodils, fish, frogs, hyacinths, lesser periwinkle, Leycesteria, marsh marigold, miniature iris, nesting, oak, pond, primrose, primula, rooks, rose, spirea, tawny owl, Twilight, viola

I went outside in the twilight this evening to collect my two sunflower seed feeders and bring them indoors. I’ll tell you why later. It was very cold – approaching freezing I should think – but so beautiful. The sky above, a deep blue with stars and a gibbous moon. The western horizon a strange mixture of misty yellow, pink and grey – a typical cold, wintry sunset. The strong NW breeze that had been blowing all day had dropped and everything was almost still and quiet, except for a few blackbirds singing and some pheasants calling across the fields. The largest feeder is hanging from the silver birch tree near the big pond and as I walked down the garden towards it a tawny owl sitting in one of the trees at the end of the garden gave a couple of loud, quavering hoots. I went to look at the pond. It was shining and the surface was a little puckered by the light breeze. It looked like pewter and reflected the trees nearby. Every now and then a ‘plip’ sounded as a fish leapt and rings appeared on the surface – frogs were croaking from the reeds at the far end.

Unfortunately, it was getting too cold to stand out there for much longer and I had the evening meal to prepare so reluctantly I returned to the house.

The rooks have definitely started nesting now. They no longer fly off to their night-time communal roost towards Beccles but are staying with their nests in the rookery. At nesting time they use a different call – almost a bleating sound – and as soon as I hear it I know that spring is here. The reason I collect the sunflower seed feeders in at night is because of the rooks. They descend on the feeders ‘en masse’, just at dawn and any seed left overnight disappears very quickly. I have known them unhook the feeders and take the lid off to get at the seed more easily. The smaller feeder is hanging from a pole stuck in the grass at the front of the house. At this time of year dawn is still quite late, but by May and June with dawn at 3.30am it is not pleasant to be awoken by twenty or more squabbling rooks just outside the open bedroom window. Until I decided to bring the feeders in I was having to get out of bed and shoo them away every few minutes. They soon realised that the noise they were making attracted my attention so they started eating in (almost) silence. Their rookishness always eventually got the better of them and some little ‘whispered discussion’ invariably got out of hand and there I was at the window again. I am a very light sleeper and I began to wake up at the slightest noise outside so something had to be done.

This morning started very overcast and cold but by 10am the clouds were breaking up and the sun coming out. I had some shopping to do so drove to Bungay. Bungay is a little difficult to get around at the moment as it is having lots of new pavements put in and the centre of the town is shut off to traffic. My ankle has been painful recently and I found walking through town difficult. Added to this, I was called ‘dear’ twice within about five minutes and I really object to being called ‘dear’ by strangers. I got home again at 11.30 and put the radio on while I had a cup of tea. Lisa Stansfield was choosing her favourite ~~records~~ tracks I mean (showing my age there!) and one of the ones she chose today was by Sylvester. Listening to this took me back to my youth. My friend W will remember that I used to go out with her brother who had a mobile disco which he ran with a friend. I used to go with them to gigs and help them set up and get the dancing going if it was a bit slow. I could dance for hours without tiring! (This also reminds me of a really good spoonerism I came out with at the time, when telling a friend what I did. I intended saying that I was ‘a roadie and a groupie’ but what I actually said was ‘a rudie and a gropie’). I thought a lot about this while drinking my tea. It didn’t seem that long ago when I was dancing all night with no aches and pains and now, here I was hobbling through town carrying my shopping bag and being called ‘dear’! What would be next, I wondered? Mowing passers-by down with a mobility scooter? Elbowing my way through shoppers to the freezer cabinet in the supermarket and running over their toes with my shopping trolley while they tut-tut and raise their eyebrows to each other over my head? Hmmmm….

To cheer myself up I went out into the garden and took a few photos.

We have a blackthorn tree at the back of the house. It is now in full blossom. The blackthorn at the front of the house is still covered with small tight buds. The temperature at the front of the house is very much lower than at the back and there is often about a weeks difference in flowering times.

Blackthorn tree

Blackthorn blossom

Blackthorn

Bumblebee on blackthorn

This oak tree was given me by my father a year after we moved into this house. He had dug it up from his garden and at the time it was only about nine inches tall. I call it Dad’s oak tree. He died nearly four years ago. A wood pigeon nested in the tree last summer and the shallow nest is still there.